Anthony Smith was on the verge of retiring after his TKO loss to Dominick Reyes at UFC 310 in December, but having now had time to think about it he’s decided to have one last fight before hanging up his gloves for good.
“I just decided that I can’t go out like that. You know?” Smith said on The Ariel Helwani Show. “Crying on the way to the cage having a God damn panic attack and just upset and sad and going in there and letting Dominick Reyes punch me in the face just to feel something other than grief. I just didn’t want to do that.
“We’re going to go one more time. One more and that’s it for me.”
The 36-year-old Smith’s last fight seemed ill-advised given that he was still grieving from the loss of his long-time coach Scott Morton, and clearly wasn’t himself during fight week.
That being said, with almost 60 career fights already under his belt and losses in five of his last seven Octagon appearances, it’s been clear for some time that ‘Lionheart’ is no longer the fighter he once was, so the outcome wasn’t guaranteed to be different even if he had been in a better frame of mind.
Some would argue that perhaps it would be best to just retire now instead of risking taking more damage in a career that’s already seen him lose by T(KO) no less than 12 times, but instead it seems he’s going to follow the familiar path of many fighters over the years and opt to step back into the Octagon one last time in the hope of ending his career on a better note.
“It’s one more. It’s win, lose, or draw, that’s it,” Smith said.
